Miscellany — June 2010 (with Gnomish special)

The last few weeks have been a frenzy of mad reorganization as my dissertation slouches towards Bedlam to be born. However, some reading was done. And a lot was undone too...

Very shortly after my previous post, the Gnome died. The Gnome was a hero of ancient Atlantis, which is my mythic reconstruction of modern Singapore. It just so happens that a few of us were busy writing two commemorative volumes about his life when he gave up the ghost. This resulted in two things: a) a sudden need to spend a lot of time reading and re-reading the source material; b) a greater urgency with regard to finishing the writing. There is a lot of material on the Gnome, so it was with a sense of calamity-struck incredulity and amusement that I saw people posting all kinds of odd things about the man.

Here, then, is a list of stuff that I've read, beginning with the stuff I was forced into reading and re-reading.

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On the Gnome, being a short list of readings on a great man:

Most of us begin with his four key works, as far as Atlantis is concerned. These are

• his great trilogy of collected speeches, talks, lectures, and rants — The Economics of Modernization (1972), The Practice of Economic Growth (1977), and Wealth of East Asian Nations (1995); and
  
• the fulcrum by which he moved Atlantean education, Report on the Ministry of Education (1978) (1979).

Although there are other writings, these probably provide the best window into his intellectual life. There are also books about him and the people he worked with, the Whites and the Greys. The ones that were most useful were

• Goh Keng Swee: A Portrait (2007), by his second daughter-in-law;
  
• Lee's Lieutenants (1999) by Lam Peng Er and Kevin Tan;
  
• A Mandarin and the Making of Public Policy (2006) by Ngiam Tong Dow, edited by Simon Tay; and
  
• Creating the Technology Edge (2002) by Melanie Chew and Bernard Tan.

A lot of incidental material could also be found in books written by and about his peers, the Thunderer, Black Diamond, Golden Mountain and others. The Thunderer and his get, in particular, had a lot to say and said less than they could have. Probably a good thing too. The rest of the list will be found in the bibliography and notes attached to the forthcoming publication. Wait for it. Heh.

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1. I happened to have the dire misfortune of succumbing to sequelimania, in which I bought a copy of Jane Lindskold's Nine Gates, the successor volume to her earlier Thirteen Orphans. It is an indifferently-written tome, in which you will see the reflection of Roger Zelazny's Amber series, but with Mahjong tiles instead of Tarot cards as the inspiration. It is horrible, and you will realise I have not mentioned anything about the plot, because there isn't enough of one even to make a Hollywood B-movie. But I hate leaving a trilogy dangling, so I guess I will still read the third one and pray that she doesn't do an Amber.

2. Boris Akunin's The Coronation is out in paperback, and it is the usual blend of Russian culture, romantic detection, and swashbuckling action. Moscow in 1896, with kidnapping, murder and mayhem. I still feel that all crime and detection enthusiasts who like the feel of the last two centuries should read everything that Akunin (not his real name) has written.

3. Chronologically further away is the Spain of Arturo Perez-Reverte's Captain Alatriste: The Man in the Yellow Doublet, in which the king is apparently murdered and our hero is framed for the crime, and in which a lot of brutality results in a lot of cynicism. I like Perez-Reverte's writing, in the courtly southern European style. I can switch between him and Zafon with no dissonance.

4. The Red Wolf Conspiracy is great fantasy fiction by Robert V S Redick. Politics, naval life, awful monsters and unreliable narrators (and narratives) all come to ghastly, enthralling, amazing life in this work of derring-do. If you like naval drama and political intrigue, this one's good. I will certainly read the sequel, if only because I will now probably read Redick until his first bad book (if ever). I ended up reading this in parallel with the first two books of Glen Cook's Starfishers trilogy, back in print. Excellent.

5. The Rook by Barry Reese is... sigh. It is pulp fiction. Awfully derivative but very enthusiastic. Uses Fu Manchu, Doc Savage, the Spider et al as a backdrop. Early to late 20th century, lots of conspiracies, fantastic technology, Nazis, vampires, zombies, well... everything. But the WORST part was the terrible proofreading. After a couple of pages, I found myself armed with a pencil and marking all the typos. Not good. I kept hoping it would improve, but it never did.

6. On the education front, I finished Diane Ravitch's great recantation of her entire life's work, The Death and Life of the Great American School System. Poor thing. Spent years in academia talking about how American education could be improved and now writes a book on how she was wrong all along. Very brave, though.

7. I also managed to get hold of John Taylor Gatto's Weapons of Mass Instruction, which is subtitled A Schoolteacher's Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling. It's a good look at the bad parts (from origins to outcomes) of its subject material. However, Gatto seems a bit less than honest in pursuit of his thesis; the selective sourcing gives it away. Really good try though, and his points remain valid most of the time.

8. Lim Kim San: A Builder of Singapore by Asad-ul Iqbal Latif is an excellent read in a rather underpopulated field. Golden Mountain was one of the Thunderer's key henchmen, but you hardly read about the man who literally raised Atlantis from the slums. And more, which a dedicated or intended Singapore-watcher really should read about.

9. Which brings me to Tom Plate's Conversations with Lee Kuan Yew, in which a veteran journalist beards the Thunderer in his own lair and shares the experience. Very insightful, amusing in parts, and possibly the best look at the Thunderer as a mortal since Michael Barr's piercing look in Lee Kuan Yew: The Beliefs behind the Man (2000).

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That's it for now. I am off to re-read David Brin's Uplift trilogies for the third time. Nostalgia.